"Swarled and sneaking a boat"

Experts were looking for extremism in the correspondence of the participants in the "new greatness", and found indirect "forms of promotion to violence"

On August 29, the Lublin court of Moscow interrogated experts, linguist and psychologist, in the case of "new greatness", who studied the correspondence of the accused for extremism. They read out the results of their conclusions without hesitation, but answered with difficulty questions. The results of the study raised a lot of questions for the defense, so the interrogation dragged on until late in the evening. Lawyers were outraged by the “incompetence” of one of the experts, the conversation at the very end of the hearing went on increased tones.

The process of the process
Court: Lublin District Court of Moscow
The defendants: Ruslan Kostylenkov, Dmitry Poletaev, Peter Karamzin, Vyacheslav Kryukov, Anna Pavlikova, Maria Dubovik, Maxim Roshchin and Sergey Gavrilov
Article: 282.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Creation and participation in the extremist community")
Stage: Interrogation of witnesses of the prosecution
Threats: from six to ten years in prison

Eight people are held in the case: four of them are in custody - Ruslan Kostylenkov, Dmitry Poletaev, Peter Karamzin and Vyacheslav Kryukov, the rest - Anna Pavlikova, Maria Dubovik, Maxim Roshchin and Sergey Gavrilov - under house arrest.

In March 2018, on charges of creating an extremist organization New Greatness, ten people were detained. According to investigators, the group members were going to seize power in Russia through a coup. The persons involved in the case say that the idea of ​​creating an organization belonged to people who had been introducing to them in a chat in Telegram.

Earlier in court, the witness Julia Kunitsyn was interrogated in court, who handed over the premises for meetings to the participants in the movement. She admitted during the interrogation that the FSB officers asked not to tell her who paid for the office rental and how she received money transfers. The office for the meetings of members of the "New Greatness", indicated in the case file, was paid by several people. One of them was a certain Rodion Zelinsky, appearing in materials as well as Radu Vladimirovich.

At the hearing on August 22, the defendants in the framework of the closed part of the meeting were identified in Zelinsky that very Ruslan Danilov, whom the defense considers the provocateur of the special services.

Currently, his whereabouts are unknown, but the court ordered the prosecution to call Danilov for interrogation. Protection suggests that the main witness of the prosecution may appear at the very end of the evidence of evidence by prosecutors or at the stage of additions.

In the meantime, the prosecutor's office completed the stage of announcement of the case file. The prosecutors took four meetings to partially or completely read 23 volumes of criminal case. In particular, the charter, created, according to the prosecution, by the participants in the “New Greatness” movement, numerous protocols and the results of several forensic examinations, were announced.

On August 29, the first part of the meeting was in a closed format: medical documents were read for about an hour. Then the meeting was opened and for interrogation called an expert of the Kaluga Scientific Research Center of forensic examination and forensics (NICEIK) Larisa Platonov. She said that she was working as a teacher of English and German, she received the qualifications of a linguist in 2017, but was involved in forensic examinations since 2014. Lawyers were confused by such a modest experience of Platonova, who conducted the study of the case file a year after the passing of linguists. In July 2018, she conducted an examination of the correspondence of accused from a closed chat in the Telegram messenger.

The expert said to the court that the investigator was interested in a number of issues: whether signs of motivation are contained in the materials presented, calls for any actions, including violent; What phrases encourage these actions and who pronounces these phrases; Whether the materials have psychological or linguistic signs of justification of any action. And not a single hint of "extremism".

Actually, the expert answered “positively” to all the questions of the investigator. So, from the correspondence of the participants in the “new greatness” it follows that they allegedly supported violent methods as a means of achieving their goals, the expert believes. Platonova quoted a message from a chat in which Poletaev and Karamzin are discussing a video where “Kurds throw the police with Molotov cocktails”:

“That's how they need to be loved - Cerberus on a leash,” writes Poletaev.

“The indirect form of the expression of negative semantics of the promotion of violence was used. The word “love” is used ironically, ”the expert said.

According to Platonova, in the message of Poletaev: “Learn, study and study again! Remember, study, use! Stop being rams and take an example from the Iranians ” -“ Linguistic signs of calling to study and apply the experience of violent anti -government protests in Iran, to use violence against police officers. ”

Listing scraps of phrases from the correspondence - “Putin’s gang Down”, “We will free Russia from the Putin occupation” and others, the expert came to the conclusion that the text “contains signs of an indirect appeal to the change of current government, including violent”.

“The methods that call the members of the“ new greatness ”are not directly named, but are interpreted in the context of the materials presented,” the expert explained.

Meanwhile, the research methods used during the study of correspondence could not explain, clarifying that she used “ordinary methods”. In addition, the expert made a reservation that the investigating authorities did not provide her with a video, which was discussed in the chat by the participants of the “new greatness”, and she had a link to the video. Moreover, the video recording was of poor quality and it was impossible to explore it, the examination was carried out using a textual decoding of these videos.

- Are you sure that the decoding is fully consistent with the video? - specified the lawyer Dubovik Maxim Pashkov.

“This is not included in my duties, I am provided with material, and I will explore,” Platonova answered.

The defenders asked to explain how it was possible to conclude that the participants called for a violent change of power in a closed chat, with a limited number of participants.

“There are remarks in this chat that it is necessary to attract as many people as possible <...> As the participants themselves write, their main goal is to pump and stagger a boat, respectively, to translate the situation in the country as an unfavorable direction, to create horror in order to shift the current government and to rule the country.

They manipulate people who receive their stickers or leaflets. As a result, the group has specific goals, ”the expert believes.

"You made a random chain of assumptions!" - the defenders said.

Pashkov began to ask clarifying questions, but he was interrupted by the prosecutor Rustam Ivanov, at the same time other lawyers joined the conversation. In the hall they began to scream, Judge Alexander Maslov tried to soften the pumped up atmosphere:

- Calmly!

“I cannot hear a witness, because these people cannot control themselves,” the prosecutor was indignant, pointing to lawyers.

- Please explain to this person that we are not “these”, but we are defenders. If Mr. Captain does not understand this, - pricked the prosecutor Pashkov.

“I think that the defense is also people ...” the prosecutor justified himself, but his words were drowned out by the laughter of the relatives of the accused, they slammed in response to Ivanov’s speech.

- Make a remark to everyone! Fix everyone in the protocol who clapped, - the prosecutor demanded. In response, the presiding judge asked me to correctly contact each other during the process.

- According to the materials presented, did you fully study the correspondence, analyzed every phrase? How many times the accused mentioned extremist statements? - the defenders continued the interrogation.

- All statements are given in the examination. I did not find anymore.

- In the examination, you brought 6–7 quotes. Although there are several thousand pages in the materials, the lawyers were perplexed.

- Yes, I found several quotes, more - this is not my duty.

Three hours later, another expert Nitsseik was interrogated by psychologist Alla Shikhaleeva, who conducted a psychological analysis of the correspondence of the defendants. She was provided with a similar set of materials that she studied Platonov. The conclusions of the second expert completely copy Platonova’s position: the text of the correspondence “contains psychological motivation for violent actions”. Shihaleev could not answer clarifying protection issues, because she no longer remembered the materials. The defense also tried to ask clarifying questions, but the prosecutor again began to insert his comments during the interrogation and bought with Pashkov. The defender could not stand it and at the very end of the meeting declared a discharge to the prosecutor. The judge’s decision was expected to reject the challenge. The next meeting was scheduled for September 3.